Last Ride on the Merry-go-round

by Judith Rochelle

  But then, not every man looked at his wife with so much love in his eyes you had to turn away at the intimacy of it. God, would she ever find that for herself, or had she missed the brass ring altogether?

  Dino was waiting where he said he'd be, his finely honed senses causing him to turn his head even before she opened the door to the porch. A bottle of beer was cradled in one hand, another sat on a little table between the rockers, along with a plate of lime wedges. He held out a bottle to her.

  "Hope you like this kind."

  "If it's cold, it's my brand.” She sat in the other rocker, tilted the bottle up to her lips and took a long drink.

  "Lime?” He pointed to the plate.

  She shook her head. “Not a habit I've ever cultivated."

  "No? You should try it. It's a Key West favorite. Come on. Just like this.” He squeezed a wedge around the neck of the bottle, then tilted the bottle back and took a long swallow. “Try it. It's good for the soul."

  "Well...” She eyed the limes skeptically, then took one, imitated his movements and took a sip of her own drink. Her eyes widened in surprise. “It actually tastes good! Even enhances the flavor of the beer."

  "See?” He winked at her. “Stick with me, kid. Your life will improve before you know it."

  Every trace of pleasure left her face. “It certainly can't get any worse, can it?"

  Dino rubbed the lime on the mouth of his bottle again, his eyes never leaving his simple task as he spoke. “Okay, you have the floor. Out with it. Get everything out of your system and then we can go on from there."

  "Okay.” She took another swallow, just to calm herself. “Besides being scared half out of my mind, I miss my daughter like crazy. And I'm pissed that I'm in this situation to begin with, thanks to the jerk head I married. If it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all."

  * * * *

  Once again Dino studied the woman sitting near him. Again he was reminded of the contrast between the high-living Jen LaCroix he'd known so long ago and this half-frightened, half-angry woman. How the hell could someone whose life appeared to have been written in the pages of a magazine have fallen down this particular rabbit hole?

  He listened carefully while she got it all out. Her disappointment in her marriage. Her rage at John for getting them in this situation. For turning her life upside down. And the fear, not for herself, but for her daughter.

  She was silent for a long time after she finished talking. When Dino didn't make any comment, she said, “Aren't you going to ask me about Deanne?"

  He shook his head, tipped the bottle up to his lips and drank. “You want to tell me, my ears are open. Otherwise it's none of my business."

  "What is your business, Dino?"

  "Making sure you're safe and helping Ethan find out who's behind all this so you can take your life back."

  Jen folded her legs under her and twisted the bottle on her thigh, eyes focused on the wet circle she was making. “So, just exactly how do you expect to do that? And what's my contribution supposed to be?"

  "Glad you asked.” He pushed himself out of the rocker. “Come on inside and I'll fire up the laptop. Show you where we'll begin. Then I'll start asking questions again. So many questions, in fact, you'll probably want to kick me before it's over. Or tell me to shut up."

  "Not if it resolves this situation. Also, you said you'd tell me about those two calls on the helicopter."

  "Inside,” he repeated.

  But as they walked into the living room the sat phone hooked to Dino's belt chirped at them.

  "Yeah?” Jen saw his eyes narrow as he listened to what Ethan was saying, although he kept the rest of his face wiped clean of all expression. “Uh huh. Yeah. Okay. Got you covered. Yeah, I'm going to tell her now."

  "Tell me what?” Jen was facing him, arms on her hips, her face taut with tension. “And don't give me any bullshit that it's nothing to do with me. You do the same thing with your eyes Ethan does when he wants to hide something."

  Dino burst out laughing. “You mean we have a ‘tell'? God, that sure can cut your legs out from under you in our business.” Then he sobered. “I've got some disturbing news for you, Jen, and I don't want you to freak out."

  In a calm voice, he related what Ethan had said on the earlier call. What was happening in Detroit, the search for John and the break-in at her house. To her credit, Jen kept herself from freaking out, but she dropped onto the couch, gripping her shaking hands together.

  "He just wanted to make sure I let you know about it. Normally there'd be an insurance company to notify, adjusters to meet with. You know the kind of stuff. But since you can't stick your head out of the ground, all that will have to wait. Anyway, the police have the house sealed off as a crime scene and have stationed someone to keep watch on it for the moment."

  "Someone will find his body soon,” Jen said. “Someone has to know about that place. I mean, it's got to be on the tax rolls or something, right? His body won't just rot away there forever."

  "I have no idea, Jen. You said yourself you didn't even know about it. Maybe he borrowed it from someone.” He tossed the empty bottles in the trash. “Do you have any idea who that might be?"

  She shrugged. “No. I just know he said we had to get out of town and he thought we'd be safe there."

  Dino took his laptop from the counter, sat at the table with it and booted it up. “Okay. Let's start again here. Tell me everything you can remember about that place. How long it took to get there. The closest town. Anything at all."

  "But—"

  "Jen, they killed John without blinking an eye. They trashed your house. There's a good possibility that whoever let John use the cabin is the one who told these guys where to find him. We have to start somewhere. Now come on. Let's get started."

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Chapter Five

  Jack Smiley sat across from Roger Wellborn, Chairman of the Board of the Tate Museum, and wondered if the man would ever give him a straight answer.

  "I really need to know what you can tell me about Sutherland's background,” he said, not for the first time. “All I have is the information from his file when he applied for the position here. That was fourteen years ago, nothing's been added since then, and to tell the truth, Mr. Wellborn, it doesn't give much except his educational background."

  Wellborn folded his hands on his immaculate desk blotter. “We checked his references and he came highly recommended. That was all we needed."

  "About those references.” Smiley pulled a small battered notebook from his jacket pocket. “They didn't seem to be listed in the file, either. I thought maybe you might remember who they were, seeing as how you were heading the interview committee back then."

  Wellborn gave him a wintry smile. “I'm sure even you can't remember information from that long ago."

  "You'd be amazed at what I remember. The point is, there doesn't seem to be a place to start here. No one can even tell me who their friends were. People don't live in a community all this time and not have a single friend.” He narrowed his eyes slightly. “Do they?"

  "Mr. Smiley,” Wellborn leaned back in his chair, “the board is very pleased with way John Sutherland has run this museum. He raised a lot of money and brought us some outstanding exhibits. He never lacked for contacts, and that's all that's important to me and to the other members of the board."

  Smiley tapped his pen on the notebook, then put them away and stood up. “Well, then. I guess we're done for the day."

  "I have no idea why you're even sticking your nose in this,” Wellborn called after him. “I'm sure the police will do an excellent job."

  As long as they're allowed to, Smiley thought to himself. His visit to the police station and his chat with the detectives looking into the case had given him the very unpleasant feeling that someone didn't want John Sutherland's disappearance looked at too closely. And wasn't it strange that no one had even found the body yet?

  * * * *

&n
bsp; The dark-haired man in the blazer and jeans occupied himself with the lobby receptionist while Smiley strode from the elevator and headed down the corridor toward the building's garage. He watched from the corner of his eye until Smiley disappeared through the door, then winked at the receptionist and exited the building. On the sidewalk, he pulled his cell phone from its belt holster and punched in a number.

  "He spent about thirty minutes with Wellborn,” he told the voice that answered. “I seriously doubt he got anything from him but I'll check."

  "What I want to know,” the voice told him, “is why he's on the case at all and just who the hell he is."

  "I'm checking into that right now."

  "Maybe it's the wife,” the voice suggested. “If so, he could be a lead to her."

  "Jennifer Sutherland doesn't have the money or the contacts to hire anyone,” the man disagreed. “Besides, it would mean coming out from wherever she and the kid are hiding and she wouldn't chance it."

  "You might try looking into her past while you're at it. Maybe there's someone there we don't know about."

  "I'm on it."

  "And you know what to do if Smiley makes a pest of himself."

  "Already taking care of that, too. I won't wait until it gets to that point. Too dangerous. And don't worry,” he added over the objections coming through the line. “No one will question it."

  "Just see that they don't. Our mission is to find those missing pieces, not spend any more time talking to the police."

  "I'm handling it.” The man clicked the phone shut and shoved it back in his holster. He hoped he wasn't being overly optimistic.

  * * * *

  Smiley was pissed. He'd pulled a list of the museum's board members off the Internet as soon as Ethan had called and set about knocking each one down. He'd gotten in to see everyone by posing as a representative of the family—not too far from wrong—up to and including the chairman, who'd been elusive and unreachable until this afternoon. Everyone he'd met with was charmingly polite but had no information to give him at all.

  Yeah, right.

  He'd only been on this case since this morning, and already the thing smelled like last week's fish.

  It was impossible for someone to be as much of a cipher as John Sutherland seemed to be. Smiley had Googled him and gotten nothing but the information in his museum file and the clippings from newspapers that covered museum events. Even the national organizations had nothing but his name, his degrees, and his current place of employment.

  Damn it. The man had to be born somewhere. He wasn't hatched and delivered full grown. At the end of the day he had almost nothing to show for his efforts. All it meant to Smiley was he hadn't looked in the right places. As soon as he got home he would touch base with Ethan and run through their contacts to see who to tap into.

  Tomorrow he needed to begin a series of friendly little chats with the Sutherlands’ neighbors. Surely some of them had kids Deanne's age. They would have played together. Maybe the parents socialized. Somebody had to know something.

  The sat phone on the seat beside him buzzed as he left the interstate north of the city and headed out to a more sparsely populated area where he lived. Like Ethan, the fewer neighbors he had to deal with, the better.

  "What's the deal?” Ethan growled in his ear.

  "The deal is something is very wrong,” Smiley told him. “John Sutherland doesn't seem to exist before fifteen years ago, and no one knows or cares anything about that. He popped out of an egg full grown and lived in a vacuum except when he was at work."

  "Jesus, Jack. He got married, he has a child. There have to be records somewhere."

  "Marriage license. No surprises there. Birth certificate. I've got the doctor's name and he's on my list for tomorrow.” He turned onto the side road that led to his house, one that wound around the hill it was perched on. “I'm also going to ... shit! Holy Jesus!"

  There was no sound, no warning. His rear tire on the outside blew and the car began to skid. He dropped the phone on the seat and fought the wheel with both hands. The hill had a sheer drop off on the outside and the car kept dragging toward it. Sweat poured down his back and made his hands slick on the wheel. With strength he didn't even know he had, he finally wrestled the car to a stop at the beginning of another turn, against a tall, overhanging tree.

  "Jack? You there, Jack?” Ethan's voice crackled from the phone. “What the hell's going on?"

  Smiley forced himself to draw deep breaths and calm his heartbeat that was thundering out of control. He picked up the phone, Ethan's voice still shouting from it.

  "I'm here.” He rubbed his hand over his face, feeling the sweat on his forehead.

  "What the hell happened?"

  "Well, if I was your average Joe, I'd say my rear tire just blew. But I'm hardly average, I just bought new tires, and the so-called blowout happened right at a dangerous curve.” He blew out a breath. “I'd say somebody shot the tire out, hoping I'd go over the side."

  "Holy Jesus!” Ethan's voice betrayed his controlled anger. “Jack, close up the file and send it to me. This isn't worth risking your safety."

  "Hell, no,” Smiley roared. “These guys are really pissing me off. And anyway, when was the last time I let someone scare me off?"

  "I'm telling you—"

  "And I'm telling you there's no way you're calling me off. Let me get home and pull myself together and I'll call you back later.” He gave a short laugh. “Good thing they didn't know I bought those self-sealing tires."

  He clicked off the call then dialed another number.

  "Me,” he rumbled into the phone. “Got a little problem and I need you to meet me and cover my ass."

  After giving his location, he disconnected. He wasn't about to get out and make sure the tire was resealed until he had someone covering his back. Jumbled thoughts ran through his mind like a video scanner as he mentally ran back the people he'd talked to during the past two days, trying to find some stingy little clue that would tell him who might have hired the shooter.

  He racked the slide on his H&K P2000 handgun, put it on the seat next to him, and sat back to wait for his friend.

  * * * *

  "That's how you keep in touch with people?” Jen asked, watching the laptop screen. “On a secure network?"

  "And how I do my research.” He made a few clicks with the mouse and brought up a new list of web sites. “See? Here's even more places to check out antiquities and what's happening with them."

  "Sooooo, if I tried to find these on my computer could I do it?"

  "If you had the password.” He blanked the screen. “Enough for now. I've got feelers out about both the cabin and recent traffic in antiquities, and I need to wait for people to get back to me."

  Jen sipped on her second bottle of beer and narrowed her eyes at Dino. “So how did you end up in Key West living like this and obviously making tons of money?"

  Dino closed out a search he'd been doing on the laptop and picked up his own beer. “I was here and the opportunity presented itself."

  She laughed. “And if you told me any more you'd have to kill me."

  He enjoyed seeing her laugh. He didn't think she'd done much of that for a long time. The corners of his mouth turned up in a slow smile. “Something like that.” He leaned back and crossed his legs, the ankle of one resting on the knee of the other. “Actually once I was out of the military, I found civilian life not too exciting. I have no family to speak of, no ties. And I guess you could say I'm an adrenaline junkie. I wanted to get into the mix again, somehow."

  "And something just fell in your lap?"

  "In a way.” He fiddled with the pencil lying on the table. “While I was trying to figure out what to do next, I bought a boat to do some deep sea fishing. About a month later two stranded tourists said they'd pay double the fee if I'd take them out, so I was in business. Then one day a guy came up to me, told me he was sent by an old friend and he'd like to charter me for two days."

&n
bsp; "But not for fishing.” Jen watched him closely.

  "Well, we did catch some fish,” Dino joked. “But I want to know about you. It's been a long time since we last saw each other. You seem ... different."

  "I hope that's a good different."

  "I see pain in your eyes, Jen. And a hopelessness that was never there.

  She shrugged. “Times change. What's to know about me? I can't think of anything I haven't told you. You know what kind of life I was leading when I was hanging out with Ethan. But when I found out I was pregnant, I had to make some major changes."

  "Did you already know your husband?"

  Jen began to methodically peel the label from the bottle. “Yes. Sort of. I had some money put aside but I still needed a job. The money wouldn't last forever and I wanted a stable situation before the baby came. I had worked before doing computer graphics, so I took some classes to brush up and hung out my cyber-shingle. Someone on the museum board saw a piece I did for a friend of hers and recommended me. They needed some brochures for upcoming exhibits and one for general fund solicitation. I spent a lot of time with John when we were putting them together."

  Dino rubbed the neck of his bottle with his thumb. “Don't take this wrong, Jen, but it doesn't seem like it took you long to land him."

  "No, and I won't make excuses for it.” She set the bottle on the table, stood up and walked to the front window. “The board was pressuring John to get married. They liked the idea of the director as a family man. I wanted a father for my child and he seemed to have all the right qualities. I set out to be the one he chose.” She turned abruptly, her body stiff. “And I want to tell you, I was a damn good wife."